Closes 30 April 2027
What is this study about?
This project explores how people make sense of compassion and future outcomes as result of paediatric healthcare interactions and how these experiences may shape perceived outcomes. Using an online qualitative story completion methodology, participants will be presented with short, open-ended story starters depicting paediatric diagnostic interactions and invited to write how they think each scenario unfolds.
Why is this study being conducted?
Widely studied in healthcare and psychotherapy, compassion is associated with empirically supported benefits for care providers and recipients. For clinicians, it’s linked to enhanced therapeutic outcomes, greater resilience, and reduced vulnerability to burnout and vicarious trauma. For patients, compassion is associated with improved satisfaction, increased treatment adherence, reduced distress, and decreased fear, anxiety and stigma. Despite documented benefits, compassion is not consistently present in healthcare. Research directly exploring patient experiences of compassion remains limited, with little work conducted in paediatric settings outside of oncology.
Story completion methods have been applied relatively infrequently in compassion research, and this project will contribute to knowledge about how narrative approaches can access lay understandings of care, particularly within paediatric contexts. We anticipate summarised results will also support recommendations to improve how compassion is communicated and trained in clinical settings, with implications for workforce development, policy, and intervention design.
Who can participate in the study?
Participation is open to Australians 18 years or older. They do not need to be parents or caregivers or have any paediatric healthcare experience.
What does participation involve?
Participation involves completing an online survey, including with some brief demographic information and then you will be invited to complete two stories centred on fictional scenarios (approximately 30 minutes). For more information on these stories or the study see the full information statement at the start of the survey, via the "Start the survey" link below or you can conctact the principal researcher, Stacey Freebody, via email, [email protected]
Start the survey